on Reflection Teaching Integrated Language Arts/Social Studies Lesson I created this lesson because the students within my class are currently studying explorers in social studies. Each student has previously chosen an explorer to research and also present a report as though they are the explorer. In each unit, students learn a different form of poetry; previously they have done the haiku. When I presented the idea of teaching an integrated lesson, my teacher immediately told me to teach poetry because the students enjoy reading and writing poetry. Once I knew what I was going to do, I did some research on poetry and found a book that had poetry about explorers. This resource was a gold mine! The book contained almost every explorer that the students had chosen. Prior to the lesson, I looked at each poem I had chosen and examined the vocabulary. I knew that some of the vocabulary was complex for students but I sat down with a dictionary and wrote down notes on my copy of the packet of poems. This was very beneficial during the lesson because it made it more meaningful when I probed students thinking about these words and I actually had an understanding. This strategy also allowed me to provide synonyms to the students. I began my lesson by asking students to identify poetry forms that they have seen in the past and one student even brought up free verse poetry. After I did this, I led a short discussion about exploration and then read the poem entitled Why Explore. I then proceeded to have students read aloud various poems and had a brief discussion in between the reading of each poem. The discussion portion of this lesson went really well. All of the students contributed and were able to share their ideas. We identified how explorers all contribute to humanity and that exploration can be seen as a progression with the passage of time. This idea further was developed as we expanded on the exploration of oceans, land, outer space, etc. We also talked about the culture of the Vikings and how they used their ruthless attitudes in thieving. I then proceeded to explain to the students that we would be writing a form of poetry called free verse about their chosen explorers. During this time, I offered ideas about what details would be useful to write about. I then told the students my requirements and proceeded to walk around helping individual students. I noticed that two students were really struggling. They really didnt have a clue as to what to even write about so I sat with each one and asked them to describe to me what their explorer did and where they explored. I think this appeared or at least felt like my biggest downfall because I felt like I had failed these two students when I was explaining the directions even though I had directions on their handouts.
Another area that I need to work on is implementing a specific process for students to follow as they are working. I was going to have them each critique another students poem when they were f...